Orange-and-blue crush

The ol' ball coach didn't look so good limping up and down the sideline Saturday at Florida Field.

Yet even with a bad knee, South Carolina's coach was moving better than his offense, a depressing shadow of the vaunted units he ruled over on this field in his reign as Gator coach.

What a miserable night for Steve Spurrier, the worst in his 19 seasons as a college football coach.

The 56-6 whipping was the most lopsided in his 232 games at Duke, Florida and South Carolina.

And yet afterward he didn't mind if the Gators reveled a little bit in what his misery should mean to them.

Spurrier said these Gators are built better than the ones that won the national title for Urban Meyer two years ago.

"This team is a lot better than that one two years ago," Spurrier said. "This team they have now is a lot stronger."

With Florida 9-1, on a six-game winning streak and steamrolling toward an SEC Championship Game showdown with Alabama in three weeks, Spurrier did more than shake Meyer's hand at midfield after the game. He pumped him with hope that a third national title may await these Gators.

While Meyer was grateful for the sentiment, he's wary where this talk may lead a team that hasn't overlooked an opponent since falling to Mississippi six weeks ago. He loves these Gators, saying unabashedly that their "chemistry borders on phenomenal," but he isn't ready to make the comparison to his '06 team quite yet.

"That team was a national championship football team," Meyer said. "I'm not disagreeing with coach, but we will make that decision as we go."

This was a special night for Meyer beyond the football. He's a big Jimmy Buffett fan, and he had the singer in the Gator locker room after the game. It's Five O'Clock Somewhere is the coach's favorite song, but there's another one he might want Buffett to sing if the Gators win the SEC title. Stars Fell On Alabama is a Buffett song that wouldn't be easy for Buffett to sing if the Gators beat the Crimson Tide.

"He's from Alabama," Meyer said.

The Gators surely have the state of Alabama's attention with this roll they're on, no matter how much Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban warns against looking ahead.

Florida's defense managed another monumental first Saturday in The Swamp. The night marked the first time a Spurrier offense failed to score a touchdown at Florida Field in the 75 games he has coached here.

With Florida finishing off the rout, Gator fans chanted words that once rang so sweetly in Spurrier's ears.

"Oh, it's great ... to be ... a Florida Gator ... Oh, it's great ... to be ..."

Every time Spurrier looked up, the guys in orange and blue were reminding him of the great teams he put together here, of the greatest times of his coaching career.

He said so.

"Yeah, '95 and '96, we had a lot of teams that did that," Spurrier said of Florida's run of routs.

The Gators have now put up 42 or more points in five consecutive victories. That equals the runs Spurrier's teams put up in the '96 and 2001 seasons.

When it comes to SEC routs, though, these Gators are proving even more dominant than any of those Spurrier teams. Florida is on a streak of six consecutive SEC victories by 28 or more points. That's something no Spurrier team ever did. In fact, no SEC team's ever done it.

Meyer, though, is not interested in firsts right now. He's after his second SEC title and second national title.